


Fragmentary

by spicytofuuuu



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Exes, F/M, Falling In Love, Feels, Fluff and Angst, Hospitalization, Mild Sexual Content, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Alternating, Reunited and It Feels So Good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:46:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27015982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicytofuuuu/pseuds/spicytofuuuu
Summary: “Ben,” she croaks, voice raspy from days of unuse, “what’re you doing here?”“Rey—”“I thought I made it clear.” She pauses and looks the other way. “I don’t want to see you or hear from you ever again.”He clears his throat. “They called me. I’m still your emergency contact.”“Oh.”
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 66
Kudos: 791





	Fragmentary

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, it's me! It's been a while, hasn't it? Anyway, this fic is something that I've been experimenting with. And suffice to say, it's been a fun experience!
> 
> Please note that this fic has parts where Rey is hospitalized after a surgery, so please be mindful of that. Feel free to reach out to me if you think I need to add additional tags!
> 
> Shoutout to the most wonderful beta and friend a girl could ever ask for, [Rose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scintillant)! Words cannot begin to explain just how much I love and appreciate you. For this, for everything.
> 
> For the beautiful souls who I have the absolute fortune to call my friends, who have been more than generous and patient as I battle multiple crisis of confidence and lack of ideas, I hope you find the crumbs that I wrote into this fic for you.

She looks so fragile. Pale. Cold. Bound to the bed.

Monitors beeping. Loud and incessant.

Nurses come in and out of the room, speaking in hushed whispers when they see him.

No, he hasn’t left the premises in about ten hours. No, he doesn’t need to go home. Yes, he’s aware of the number of coffee cups lined up on the windowsill. No, he’s not shaking (yet). Yes, he looks like a trainwreck.

No, he doesn’t give a shit. Not about any of that.

And no, he _really_ doesn’t need anything.

At least nothing that isn’t her.

All he cares about is her. And she’s lying there. Helpless.

***

She dreams of the pitter-patter of rain against the large bay window.

Of a warm body embracing hers.

Of rough stubble grazing against her cheek.

Of long fingers trailing down her body, from scalp to spine.

Of sleepy kisses and promises of blueberry pancakes in the morning.

It’s not a dream, though.

At least, it’s not a figment of her imagination. She knows it.

It’s memories on loop. Things she wishes she could forget, but her mind decides otherwise.

Not even four months and 200 miles could make her forget about him.

How he moves, how he talks, how he breathes, how he smells.

He always smells like coffee. And hints of cardamom and leather. _Pretentious bougie-ass cologne,_ she loved to tease him.

His scent comforts her and she’s missed it, just as she’s missed him.

***

The sound of the continuous beeping pulls Rey out of her slumber. It hadn’t been a pleasant one, considering how _off_ she feels. The air smells clinical, and the chill is unwelcome.

She barely moves her body before a jolt of pain startles her.

The last thing she remembers is working on a car and suddenly feeling a blinding pain in her lower right abdomen, before everything turned to black.

When she opens her eyes, she suspects that she’s been hospitalized. It doesn’t take that long to confirm her notion.

Something clipped to her right middle finger, something poking the vein on the inside of her right elbow, something wrapped tightly on her upper left arm.

And someone sitting beside her.

_Ben._

Fuzzy around the edges, Ben. Her ex-boyfriend, Ben. The man that haunts her dreams and waking hours, Ben.

She tries to stay still, as best as she can, squinting her eyes as she takes him in.

The Ben sleeping in the chair beside her bed isn’t like anything she remembers. He’s not a dream, that’s for sure because there’s no way her mind would ever show him like _this._

Because this Ben looks tired. Disheveled. Worn out.

Ben always took pride in his grooming habits and personal appearance, so to see him in this state is quite unnerving.

He looks like he’s lost weight, his skin sallow and his under eye circles dark and prominent. His dress shirt is all wrinkled, sleeves rolled up past his elbows. His hair is mussed, and she imagines that he must have run his fingers through it a million times. His chin is propped up on his fist, leaving an imprint on his skin.

He looks nothing like she remembers and her heart breaks a little bit for him.

Oh, how she wants to reach out to touch him, smoothing out the wrinkles and the worry lines, mapping the constellation of moles across his face.

She rubs her eyes with more force than necessary, trying to make sure once and for all that he’s not a conjured image, a mockery courtesy of her injured heart.

And sure enough, he startles and sits up, breaking her out of her reverie.

“Ben,” she croaks, voice raspy from days of unuse, “what’re you doing here?”

“Rey—”

“I thought I made it clear.” She pauses and looks the other way. “I don’t want to see you or hear from you ever again.”

He clears his throat. “They called me. I’m still your emergency contact.”

“Oh.”

***

“I can’t do this anymore.”

She had been wiping the countertops when she said the words.

“Ho-kay there, no need to be dramatic. I told you I would wash the dishes since you cooked.” He approached the sink full of dishes and started to fill it with water and soap.

Rey just shook her head. “I can’t be with you anymore.”

It was a Thursday evening. There were no incidents, no fights, no arguments. Nothing.

She cooked for him, they ate together in companionable silence, she wiped the counters, and then this.

The water was still running. He couldn’t figure out how much time had passed exactly, only that the sink had almost overflowed.

Rey reached beside him to turn the water off, half-whispering as she did.

“And I think it’s for the best if we don’t see or hear from each other again.”

The conversation had come out of nowhere.

Hell, it hadn’t even been a conversation, considering he hadn’t done anything else other than stand there in silence trying to process what on earth had just unfolded. Unprompted.

When she shut the apartment door with a soft thud and a sad smile, he didn’t even go after her. She had told him not to. He listened.

It wasn’t until the next day when he found out that her apartment had been vacated and his number was blocked that Ben realized that Rey had meant every single word.

***

The doctor comes in not long after she regains consciousness, and promptly explains to her that her appendix had ruptured. The surgery had lasted for two hours and she’d been asleep for ten.

When they ask her whether she’d had any symptoms before the incident, Rey mentions her loss of appetite, malaise, and nausea.

Exhaustion, she had figured. She had to work her body hard just so she wouldn’t have enough energy to think about anything else— _anyone_ else. And any pain she’d experienced wasn’t anything Tylenol couldn’t fix.

Ben furrows his brows as she speaks, even though she doesn’t tell him that she had thought of it as symptoms of a broken heart— her punishment for what she’d done to him.

The doctor nods along, turning to Ben to explain that she has to stay another day or two for monitoring.

Rey wants to tell the doctor that Ben shouldn’t be here. That she doesn’t deserve Ben being here. She’s too drained to voice that. Or maybe a part of her selfishly wants him to be there, even if it’s for just a second longer.

She can tell that he’s holding himself back from talking to her the moment the doctor leaves the room. He probably wants to scold her for being so careless with her own health, but he knows better than to address that.

The heat of his skin bleeds into hers as silence fills the room once more.

Eventually, she asks the question she dreads asking. “Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

He sits cross-legged, sipping what she knows is vending machine coffee. She can tell by the way he keeps wincing as he drinks it, perhaps internally cursing its vile taste.

“This.” She gestures to the room, to the space between them, and lets out a whisper, “I don’t get it.”

He hears her though, he always does.

“Don’t get what?”

“You came. You drove— two hours? You didn’t have to.” She fidgets with the plastic clip of her pulse oximeter. “We’re not even together anymore.”

He sucks in a deep breath. “You really don’t get it, Rey?”

He doesn’t have to say anything, because she hears him loud and clear. His eyes never seem to be able to hide what he truly feels, and it frightens her.

“Please don’t.”

“Rey, I—“

“Ben, stop. Leave. Now. Please.”

The tears threaten to roll down her cheeks, but she wills them to stay in place. She won’t let her body betray her with a reaction.

“I won’t. I won’t go. I won’t leave you. I can’t. That’s your MO, not mine.”

It’s quite the slap in the face. Rey would be offended if it wasn’t true, but it is.

Because she leaves. Leaves before she gets left.

Because at the end of the day, it’s best to not give into her emotions and to not have any expectations.

Because she survived this long by doing so, caging her fragile heart behind a mask of indifference and zero attachments.

Because it works.

Because it hurts less when you know exactly _when_ it’s supposed to hurt.

So she makes excuses for herself. Against herself.

_Ben would be better off without her. He has potential. He has a future. Her existence would just weigh him down. She doesn’t deserve him._

If she repeats the words enough, she can make herself believe that it’s true. So she convinces herself she’s a nobody.

But he’s here. Now. And she’s not strong enough to face him.

If she was strong enough, she could remind herself how much of a nobody she is, to convince herself that Ben is not looking at her with care and devotion in his eyes. That he didn’t just drop everything he was doing to come to see her at the hospital. Because of course, he did. And those three unspoken words right at the edge of his lips, the words she refuses to hear? Of course, he does. And the thing is, _that_ is not what scares her the most. It is that she _still_ feels the same way, too.

***

_“Need a hand there?”_

He looked up from under his smoking hood to see an angel.

He’d died. And gone to heaven. That was the only explanation.

His car— his very expensive car— had decided to die on him in the middle of the street in bumfuck nowhere.

Several icons on his dashboard continued flashing and a loud screeching noise filled the air whenever he pushed on the ignition button.

He’d thought that a car that cost this much wouldn’t have given him this much grief. Wrong.

For whatever reason, the universe had decided to fuck with him, because it was also impossible to get any reception. He’d taken matters into his own hands and attempted to open the hood of his car to assess the damage.

He tried very hard to remember what his father had taught him about cars. Han Solo taught him a lot, but Ben’s mind had retained very little.

Smoke coming out of the car was never a good sign, he mused. He tried to wiggle some cords, which only resulted in sparks shooting out to get him. And because he must have done some truly heinous shit in the past that he was being punished for, it started to rain.

So the moment he heard _“Need a hand there?”_ spoken so softly by an incandescently beautiful woman holding an umbrella over his head, he was almost certain he was dead.

Or maybe not.

Because in the thirty seconds that he spent trying to figure out what to say, she had invaded his personal space.

The first thing Ben noticed up close was that she smelled of figs and motor oil, which was a weird scent combination. A pleasantly weird combination.

The second thing was that she had freckles. A lot of them. And a couple of grease marks on her cheeks and chin.

It was almost as if she could hear what he was thinking, because she gave him a small smile and said, “I just got off work. I’m a mechanic. I can take a look if you want?”

She was gorgeous and Ben was staring at her, his mouth agape, for what must have been an inordinate period. Long enough that she started to wave her hands in front of his face.

“Hello? Oh fuck, don’t tell me you don’t speak English.”

“Oh, I do.” He coughed, attempting to hide his dumbfoundedness. “Sorry. Inhaled too much fume, I think.”

She smirked, quirking an eyebrow and pointing at the engine, “I can—”

He nodded far too quickly and enthusiastically blurted, “Please.” He was desperate, after all.

Ben held the umbrella for her as she tinkered with his engine.

“You’ve got a beautiful car here.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Not every day I get to work on something like this.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Must have cost you a lot of fortune, eh?”

“Quite a bit.”

“Shame you don’t take care of it.”

“Mm— what?”

“I said, it’s a shame this lovely car is in the hands of someone who _clearly_ doesn’t appreciate it.”

“Sure, I appreciate the car! And I take good care of it.”

“I don’t mean filling up the gas and taking your car to the car wash. When’s the last time you checked under the hood?”

“I take it to the shop regularly.”

“Yeah, whoever is doing your car service is most definitely ripping you off, just saying.”

“Wait, what?”

“Smoke’s coming out because either they never changed your oil or they cheaped out on the kind they’re supposed to use. Anyway, your starter is bad. And I wouldn’t put it past your battery being pretty shit too.”

Ben felt like a blithering idiot as she just shook her head and offered more explanation. “We can try jump-starting your car. And even if it works, it’s just a temporary fix. Make sure you take your car to a different shop this time, yeah?”

The woman gestured towards her truck, and he went with her to cover her with the umbrella as she ransacked her truck for a set of jump start cables.

She deftly hooked the cables to her truck and then to his car, with him following her every footstep like a lost little puppy.

“Okay, pretty boy,” she said, clicking her tongue, “you need to take a step back. I don’t need the umbrella, so you can hold onto it. I’ll get your car started.”

“But you’ll get wet.”

“I’ll be fine. Now please, take a step back before you ruin that suit. I’m sure it costs more than my monthly rent,” she said brusquely and Ben winced at her jab.

It didn’t take her much longer to start his car while he simply stared at her from the side as she jumped in and out of her truck and into his.

She exuded radiant energy that he wished to capture and bottle in a jar.

He never understood what love at first sight was up until this exact moment.

He may not have been dead, but he was most certainly gone for her.

***

“Why did you break up with me?”

She’s too tired to argue, her mind too groggy and her lips too loose. “You really want to do this?”

“Yeah, really,” he shrugs. “You can’t run away. You’re physically bound to the bed.”

“Ha-ha.”

“Humor me, Rey.”

 _Hurt me_ , that’s what he’s asking.

Rey doesn’t want to hurt him, she shouldn’t hurt him. Not again—not by lying, anyway.

Because this time he’ll see right through her, because this time she doesn’t get to escape afterward.

So she tells him the truth.

“Because it was going too well.”

***

Ben was gone for her, but he was smart enough to remember to ask for her number. He was his father’s son after all.

“For— you know— when I need an expert opinion. You said it yourself, I was ripped off.”

She pursed her lip, but he could tell she was holding back a smile. Which was a good thing, because he wouldn’t know what he would do if she unleashed a full smile on him.

“I charge a fee for consultation, pretty boy.”

“Ben Solo.”

“I’m Rey. Give me your phone. My phone’s dead right now, so you text me,” she said, before blushing and casually adding, “or whatever.”

He immediately texted her the moment he got home. It took her a grand total of 30 seconds to reply to him, to his relief.

When he kept contacting her without ever asking about cars, she never questioned it.

It took him two weeks of flirting and holding back, in the effort to not seem overly eager, for him to ask her out on a date. ( _Took you long enough,_ she quipped at him.)

He planned the whole thing out. He was going to pick her up at her apartment with a fresh bouquet of sunflowers, take her to the fancy restaurant downtown, and perhaps go for a walk around the park where he would hopefully get to kiss her. He had been thinking and plotting and hoping for a good part of the week.

The plan went sideways almost immediately, because the moment he got to her apartment, she immediately pulled him in for a kiss.

A kiss that turned into frenzied moans, rapid disrobing, and grips that would most certainly bruise.

The bouquet of flowers was forgotten by the front door, the outfit he picked out and meticulously ironed crumpled by the foot of the bed.

With the weight of her body against his, her nails scraping down his back, and her pants warm against his neck, he found it impossible to complain.

***

He whispered the three words for the first time after she fell asleep. He hadn’t known she was only pretending to be asleep. Or maybe he did, and that was why he’d said it.

***

“ _Too well_? That's why you left?” he scoffs.

“I just—” Rey pauses, searching for the right words to make it make sense. “All good things come to an end, Ben. You know it. I just saved us the trouble.”

Ben furrows his brows, his jaw shifting from side to side. He's thinking, carefully concocting his words.

“You know what? It was a mistake.”

She stills. This is it, she thinks. This is where Ben confirms her deepest and darkest fears, that she truly _is_ a nobody and that she means absolutely nothing to him.

“The biggest mistake of my life, honestly.”

Rey stares at her hands, the thin flimsy sheet wrinkles under her fists. She can’t look at him. The dam of tears is dangerously close to breaking. Weeks of crying herself to sleep obviously weren’t enough. She hasn’t emptied the Ben Solo tear tank just yet.

“It was a mistake,” he sucks a deep breath, “to not fight harder for you. For us.”

Her head snaps up to see how he stares at her earnestly.

“I thought I was doing both of us a favor by giving you space. Clearly, that was a mistake. And you know what? I’m not going to be silent anymore.”

“As if you could be silent,” she whispers to herself, unable to hold back, even though she knows better. He lets out a small laugh, throwing his head back against what she thinks must be a very uncomfortable chair.

Seconds feel like hours as she watches him clench his jaw and his fingers tap a rhythmic beat against his thigh, staring into the ceiling. He’s thinking. And now she so desperately wants to know what he’s thinking about. Quite the opposite of her initial stance of not wanting to hear what he has to say.

“You know, I made a list of annoying things you do to help me move on. For example, you have terrible taste in food.”

“Wha—?”

“You make that sandwich with peanut butter, bananas, custard—”

“—all perfectly delicious ingredients—”

“—and bacon.”

“It’s called sweet and savory.”

He clicks his tongue. “I almost forgot that you microwave your pizza.”

“Oh, I’m sorry if my method of pizza reheating offends your delicate sensibilities and is not up to your pretentious standards,” she scoffs, throwing her hand in the air, careful to not yank the IV line from the port.

“You steal my clothes. I find myself missing plenty of my T-shirts and hoodies.”

“What did you need the shirts for? You sleep shirtless.” She scrunches her nose before continuing, “And those hoodies are too small for you anyway.”

“You make terrible coffee.”

“Excuse me? I make perfectly fine coffee. And why is this the first time I am hearing about it?”

“Because, Rey, I don’t care. I'll drink sewer water if you make it for me. I’ll gladly eat microwaved pizza. I’ll buy a hundred shirts.”

“Ben...”

“Anyway. The list.” He looks up at the ceiling, sighing, “It was a futile effort. Because none of it matters. You took my heart and that was that.”

His gaze returns to her, “And no, you don’t get to interrupt me or pretend you don’t want to hear it, but I love you.”

“Present tense?”

“Yes, of course, present tense. Do you honestly think I would be here if I didn’t love you anymore? I hate hospitals—”

 _Right, he hates hospitals._ Rey furrows her brows.

“Everything smells either like bleach or piss. Don’t get me started on the food—”

_He loves me._

“—abysmal doesn’t begin to cover it—”

_He really does, doesn’t he?_

“Ben.” She gently puts her hand on his arm, interrupting his rant. “Are you not scared?”

“Of what?”

“Of this. Of us. Of what would happen if things don’t work out.”

He looks at her, blinking ever so slowly, before saying, “Of course I am. But it’s not an entirely bad thing, Rey. Look,” he huffs, “I’m scared of losing you. Hell, I did lose you. And I really thought I had lost you forever when I got that phone call.”

“Ben, I’m—”

“And it’s okay to be scared. It’s okay because there’s so much shit that can happen, any single second now. But you have to believe that you deserve good things, you deserve to _have_ good things.” Her dam of tears, the one she’s been so good at keeping shut, breaks.

“I know life has been hard on you, and I’m not saying that it won’t have hard moments. And I’m not asking you for forever. I’ll take whatever you’re willing to give me, and we can do life together.”

He lays a hand on top of hers and squeezes it. “We can be scared together.”

“I just— I am— It’s—”

“What is it?”

“I am a lot to deal with, Ben.”

“Let me make it perfectly clear that you are not and never will be something I have to _deal with_ , Rey.”

Maybe it’s the time apart that makes her see everything more clearly. Maybe it’s the near-death experience. Or maybe it’s the fact that Ben is right in front of her and his words shouldn’t mean much, but the conviction in his words brands her skin like a hot iron and his love feels tangible and she’s definitely scared.

But she won’t be alone. They can be scared _together._

“I’m sorry.” She wipes the tears with the back of her hand. “For running out on you.”

“I’m sorry, too,” he says, grabbing her hand and placing a kiss on her knuckles, “for letting you run out on me without a fight.”

“I miss you.”

“I miss you too.” He scoots closer, his forehead pressing against hers. “So fucking much.”

When he finally kisses her, he tastes like cheap coffee loaded with enough sugar to crack a tooth in half, but grinning against her mouth, he feels like home and she feels like she can finally breathe again.

“I love you.”

“Took you long enough.”

***

Ben jolts from his sleep to the sound of ruckus and clattering from outside the bedroom.

He pats her side of the bed. Empty, but still warm.

A litany of curses come from the kitchen and he can’t help but wonder what kind of predicament Rey has put herself in at six in the morning.

He quietly tiptoes out of the bedroom and into the kitchen, where he’s greeted by the sight of Rey wearing nothing but his shirt...and somehow covered in some kind of batter?

“Whatcha doing, sweetheart?” He puts his chin right over her shoulder, and she immediately jumps backward and crashes into his body.

“Bloody hell, Ben. You scared the crap out of me!”

“Sorry! But seriously, what are you doing?” He wraps his arms around her waist as he surveys the mess around the kitchen, which strongly resembles a battlefield in which he suspects Rey lost in.

“I wanted to make the sandwich.”

“What sandwich?”

“You know, the one with the peanut butter and custard and bananas and bacon?”

His terror must have shown through his expression, because she starts giggling when she looks up at him.

“I’m just teasing! I’m trying to make pancakes. Don’t get your knickers up in a bunch, Ben.”

“Speaking of knickers… Are you wearing any?”

“Look, I couldn’t find a pair in the dark and I wanted to surprise you with pancakes and I know you’re going to tell me how unhygienic it is or whatever—”

She rambles for a bit, but all Ben can think about is the fact that she’s here and he gets to wake up every morning to her and it doesn’t get any better than this. With Rey currently pressed against his body wearing nothing but _his_ shirt and the sunrise glinting off the diamond in her ring finger, his heart is not the only part that swells at this sight.

“—I know you’re the cook in this relationship, but I just thought it would be nice—”

Her words ended abruptly as his fingers ghosted along her thigh, right on the hem of _his_ shirt.

“Babe, what are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m just about to eat breakfast.”

***

Home is weekends spent cuddling on the couch watching The Blue Planet. It’s a compromise because Rey would love to go to the aquarium, but Ben has an irrational fear of the water tanks ( _What if the glass cracks, Rey? It only takes a small crack and we’re done with! There are sharks on the other side!_ )

Home is Ben running out to buy tampons, Advil, two pints of pistachio ice cream, and a trashy magazine at the corner store whenever she’s balled up under a pile of blankets, suffering through period cramps.

Home is that brief, infinitesimal moment where she thinks she can’t give him _one more_ but he manages to get her there anyway. Where stars burst into a blinding light behind her eyelids and for a split second she thinks she’s seen heaven.

Once she decides to stop running, it’s crystal clear that everything she ever wanted and needed was right there all along.

She’s home.

**Author's Note:**

> [I'm on Twitter!](https://twitter.com/spicytofuuuu)


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